Not strictly more expressive, though. There is something that Org mode cannot express and Markdown can: code that begins or ends with whitespace. (And this has been an annoyance a few times in actual Org mode files I have written.)

In Org mode, you can’t write something like “append ~ & vbCrLf~ to each line”. Markdown makes that possible – not with `, but with its reassuringly ever-present escape hatch of writing raw HTML. You can always write “append <code> & vbCrLf</code> to each line”.

You could probably fix this locally by editing the setting org-emphasis-regexp-components, but then your Org mode files won’t look the same on other people’s computers.

Or, coming at it from the other direction, you can use Evil to bring Vim keybindings to Emacs, while using the canonical org-mode plugin. Evil worked well for me when I used org-mode for three months – it’s a very complete emulation. Though compared to sticking with Vim, it requires you to start from scratch with your configuration.

(passy’s link is to Spacemacs, a bundle of Emacs plugins that includes Evil.)

This is what I do, but it is a bit of a hassle if you use emacs for things other than vanilla text editing. If you use other emacs packages, you often get either keybinding clashes or outright brokenness, especially when in normal mode. Lots of emacs packages are really not expecting vim-style keybindings, so you have to add workarounds to your local config to sort things out, either with a real fix, or by selectively disabling evil-mode with something like (evil-set-initial-state ‘offending-mode 'emacs).

With org-mode, for example, out of the box one of the more common keybindings, TAB to expand/collapse a heading, clashes with evil-mode.